I am not a fan of hobbies. (define:hobby - A hobby is a spare-time recreational pursuit. ) Structured mind & body soothers, tucked into a limited amount of (supposedly free) time.
Ecstatic hobbies. People in trance.
What is your hobby? Arts? Crafts? Worship? Dance? Sports? Animals? Space? Counting sheep? Each having its own definition, its own set of rules that you have to learn and master before you can break free of them... Divine passions! but with strict rules that let you be only within certain boundaries... The contradiction simply doesn't appeal to me.
Don't get me wrong. I have had my own hobbies in time. Let me see. What have we got deep down our gestalt:
Basketball - one whole day, and at the end of the day I ran, ran away
Guitar playing - three months, and played at a concert
Tennis - three summers
School newspaper - two semesters
Drawing - one summer, frankly the pencil stole my heart along with my 3d vision
Sculpture - a semester
Poetry - for a very small amount of time
Tango - a few attempts
Sax - just started
Fitness - has been a few months
Movies - five years of constant watching, critiques written in a few art magazines
New language learning - four of them
I don't consider listening to music and reading as hobbies, they are too vital and too passive to be hobbies. I also don't consider dealing with history (having dealt with it for two years and taken part in an excavation) and human rights projects (a few projects) as hobbies as they are too serious and earthly to be so.
Hobbies listed above and alike, they are like placebo drugs of an asylum, one of them being exceptional.
Movies.
I won't start dramatizing the whole concept with trembling hands and frantic puppy eyes, don't worry. The recreation-of-life speaks for itself. It's just that, I have always been amazed with what I know about human (in addition to being amazed with what I don't know), and it seems that movies were the lowest-risk courses I had. In terms of wisdom, they are accelarated versions of books and self-experiences, but with new mimics, colors, unexpected compositions, accompanying new musics that doesn't stem from what I knew before. I was rarely interested in film credits. It's all about the story and the characters. They have the power and ability to give you a life's lesson in a few hours. If you watch one or two everyday, you do learn a great a deal in a few years. "So" you might say "going to the movies and becoming a wise saint in a few years doesn't sound sensational". Needless to say, interpretation plays a big role in this process. I might not get the same message or don't get caught by the same scenes as the rest of the audience, but I do get a feeling, mostly an insightful one, and more importantly, I record those feelings. Also feeding on my risk-taker nature that only the closest ones to me are informed of, I have a vast database of feelings and reactions within me, also with special thanks to movies.
